收割者 (e)

Hamilton had already made nearly 20 etchings when he began to experiment with the mechanical imagery provided by a reaping machine in order to test the depictive possibilities of the medium and the individual characters of the marks it would produce in a far more conscious way. ‘The “Reaper” series was inspired by Giedeon's Mechanization Takes Command. Repetition of the simple contrasting forms of the agricultural machine provided material for investigating the technical resources at the Slade School. The “variations” were shown at Gimpels a year after their execution’ (Hamilton, p.23). For that exhibition Hamilton marked edition numbers on his proofs assuming an edition size of 20 or 25 for the benefit of possible customers: in fact he printed very few of each and probably not more than half the number marked in each case.